Abstract:
This study provides experimental evidence for preschool children's competence in basic information structure, with particular attention to the notions of topic and focus. It investigates their mastery of structural and de finiteness distinctions to encode the information status of discourse referents, and seeks to distinguish linguistic competence from cognitive development as the source for children's 'errors'. Evidence comes from a story-telling experiment performed on 45 children acquiring French (between the ages of 2;6.22 and 5;6.15). The paper demonstrates continuity between the child and adult systems of basic discourse representation. It further argues that children's de finiteness errors are not due to a lack of knowledge of the adult rules of information encoding. Rather, such errors stem from cognitive limitations and from assuming a wider common ground than adults would.
Published in the Journal of Child
Language. 38(4):828-860. (DOI:10.1017/S030500091000036X or see pre-publication version: PDF)